Next on our list is The Lofoten Islands. So, we continued our journey north and crossed the arctic circle - a pretty uneventful occasion but we took the obligatory photo on the mountain plateau and gave a wide berth to the souvenir shop. Then we headed onto Bodø for the ferry. Stopped on the way at the Bula rock carvings, 4000 years old and still visible outlines of a deer, man on skis and a bear. Great place to free camp too, up in the quiet forests. Vanda’...

To combine travel with sightseeing we took the ferry from Hellesylt to Geiranger along the fjord. Bit like a cross between a cruise and a ferry trip. Awesome scenery as ever, passed the seven sisters waterfalls (could only count five) and several abandoned farms in the hills (where they tied the kids to ropes so they didn’t fall off the farm, surprised they moved out?) From Geiranger Connie hauled us up the Eagle Road, 11 hairpin bends up 620m to the plateau a...

Next stop Lom. Up over the mountains again, tunnel after hairpin bend and on and on. Vanda is starting to dread to mountain roads and prefers tunnels as she can’t see the drops off the side like on the roads! Snow up here again at 1400 m. We have to stop at a tunnel due to roadworks and get chatting to a workman who tells us that Norway is having a terrible summer so far, perhaps that’s why we’re wearing the thermals we brought along for Svalbard. Took a lo...

First stop was the Stegastein viewpoint - a wooden pier built on the edge of the mountain, 650m above the fjord with stunning views & a glass panel at the end. Needless to say Vanda didn’t make it to the end, but she did walk onto the pier & enjoyed the view looking out rather than down! The drive up was pretty dramatic on a narrow, often single track, hairpin bend road ( the only road before they built the 24km tunnel that we arrived at Flam through) ...

We flew back from Svalbard overnight, it made no real difference there as it was still light at 2.30 am when we left. Got back to Connie in Oslo at about 5 am and set off toward Flam on the Sognefjorden. After a couple of hours we pulled into a picnic area and took a few hours sleep. Great to be able to stop, pull the blinds and go to bed. Took about 5 hrs in all to get to Flam, the main roads are good but the local roads are torturous - windy & quite narrow...